Agrigento, Sicily

Don't be fooled.

There's no such thing as the present.

The past just stands there and the future consists of an unyet unknown admixture of the present that doesn't exist and the past that's just standing there.

The classical world, that world that extended from the Sahara in the south to the British Isles in the north, might have once been centered in Sicily in sixth century B.C.

Archaeological finds from the late 1950's at Agrigento, Sicily, indicate that many beautiful artifacts--torsos, sphinx, heads of gods and goddesses in terracotta--found just north of the Temple of Herakles (pictured here) and presumed to once have been part of the temple, were "thrown chaotically into wells and cisterns" in the fourth Century B.C.

The classicist Mary Beard in her great little book, Classics A Very Short Introduction (co-authored by John Henderson and published by Oxford University Press, 1995)  makes the point that the point of any civilization, culture, whatever you want to call it, is to make the most of the present by trying to make sense of a past that now only exists in the present, and portends a very uncertain future.